Argo' thrills with its history and drama

Victor Garber, at left, as Ken Taylor and Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in "ARGO," a presentation of Warner Bros. Pictures in association with GK Films, to be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Photo by Keith Bernstein

It’s no surprise to New York Times bestselling author and Canadian history professor Robert Wright that “Argo” is ruling the roost at this year’s movie awards or that it is, favored to win an Oscar for best picture.

“Ben Affleck is a really nice guy. And ‘Argo,’ his new movie about the rescue of six fugitive U.S. diplomats in Tehran in 1980, is without question the best spy thriller to hit the big screen since Jason Bourne lost his birth certificate,” said Wright, speaking as a fan of movies and spy thrillers. “I really like the Bourne movies. This has a lot of the same cloak-and-dagger techniques that make them so exciting to watch.”

But as a historian, it’s worrisome to Wright to think that the movie is now what people equate to the Iran hostage crisis.

Nov. 4, 1979, was the day Iranian students stormed and occupied the United States embassy in Tehran, taking 66 embassy personnel hostage. The ordeal lasted 444 days, with 52 of the hostages held in captivity for the entirety. Amidst the chaos, six Americans managed to evade capture. At the heart of the operation to extricate the U.S. officials was Ken Taylor, the take-charge and unflappable Canadian Ambassador to Iran, and John Sheardown, the pipe-smoking veteran with grandfatherly appeal in charge of the Canadian embassy’s immigration section. For three months, Taylor and his wife Pat, along with Sheardown and his wife Zena, concealed the six Americans from the revolutionary government. Sheardown, who was never mentioned in the film and died three months after it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, knew possibly as early as the day the embassy was attacked that his friend Bob Anders, an American consular official, had not been taken hostage. He and Zena decided together that should Anders need refuge, they would take him in. “Taylor agreed that they - and by extension Canada - should do everything in their power to help,” said Wright, whose book, “Our Man in Tehran” (Other Press, 2011), is considered a definitive source on the crisis.

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Once all six Americans (known as the “houseguests”) were brought in from the cold, it was decided four of them would stay with the Sheardowns, and two would go to the Taylors.

As for “Argo” being the story of record, “It’s already starting to happen,” Wright said. “I was in a seminar when one of my students told me he saw ‘Argo’ and thought it was great that Canada helped the CIA rescue six American hostages.”

As the young lad quickly learned from the professor of history at Trent University in Oshawa, Ont., it was Canada that spearheaded the operation, not the CIA. Former Canadian ambassador Taylor, whose role in “Argo” is portrayed by Victor Garber, told a Toronto Star reporter, “The movie is fun, it’s thrilling, it’s pertinent, it’s timely. But look, Canada was not merely standing around watching events take place. The CIA was a junior partner.”

Wright concurred.

Canadians got the passports for the six houseguests. They bought the airline tickets and drove to the airport. For his efforts, Taylor was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. But the real Canadian caper -- as the covert operation is known -- was very garden variety, other than the plan for the houseguests to pose as Canadian filmmakers.

Chris Terrio’s script is thrilling and based on selections from “The Master of Disguise” written by CIA operative Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) and Wired magazine’s “The Great Escape” by Joshuah Bearman. Nominated for Oscar’s best adapted screenplay, it’s a story filled with fuel-injected suspense such as the final scenes at the airport where they are detained and narrowly escape capture by the Iranians. That never happened. But that scene has audiences holding their breath and imagining the fear that everyone involved in the escape were likely feeling at the time.

That’s the magic of cinema at work.

“Do I wish the movie would have been more accurate? Naturally, I am a historian but that isn’t reason enough to say Affleck’s not deserving of all this. It really is terrific and it’s been good for me and it’s been good for the story,” Wright said. Historians will just have to wait for the documentary, “Our Man in Tehran.”

The following are a few interesting facts about the secret mission to save six Americans during the Iran Hostage Crisis, according to Canadian history professor and author Dr. Robert Wright and CIA operative Tony Mendez:

Ken Taylor’s friend Peter Jennings, then an ABC News correspondent in Tehran, went to dinner at Taylor’s house. The Americans hid the entire time. When Jennings found out later Taylor had withheld the scoop of a lifetime, he playfully chastised the ambassador.

Studio Six Productions office was previously occupied by Michael Douglas, who just finished work on “The China Syndrome.”

The fake Studio Six production office received 26 scripts, including one from Steven Spielberg.

Coincidently, the name of the Swiss jetliner the Americans boarded was “Argau.”

Several ambassadors knew about the houseguests’ existence and aided in efforts to keep them safe: Troels Munk of Denmark, Chris Beedy of New Zealand and Sir John Graham of the UK. At one point, Britain hosted five of the houseguests, while the Swiss harbored one.

About the Author

Gina Joseph is a multimedia journalist and columnist for The Macomb Daily. Reach the author at gina.joseph@macombdaily.com Follow @ginaljoseph on Twitter or visit her beat blog macomblife.blogspot.com. Reach the author at gina.joseph@macombdaily.com
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